How Some Rustbelt Cities are Becoming the Smartest Places on Earth and Why it Matters

CID Student Ambassador David Pareja interviews Antoine Van Agtmael, Senior Adviser at Foreign Policy Analytics and principal founder, CEO and CIO of Emerging Markets Management LLC. Interview recorded on February 3rd, 2017. About Antoine: Mr. Van Agtmael is a senior adviser at Foreign Policy Analytics, a public policy advisory firm in Washington DC and was the principal Antoine Van Agtmaelfounder, CEO and CIO of Emerging Markets Management LLC (and later chairman of AshmoreEMM), a leading investment management firm for emerging market equities. He was also a founding director of the Strategic Investment GroupSM. Before founding EMM in 1987, Mr. van Agtmael was Deputy Director of the Capital Markets department of the International Finance Corporation ("IFC"), the private sector-oriented affiliate of the World Bank. While at IFC, he coined the term “emerging markets” and founded the IFC Emerging Markets Database. He was also a Division Chief in the World Bank's borrowing operations, Managing Director of Thailand's leading merchant bank TISCO and Vice President at Bankers Trust Company. Mr. van Agtmael is co-author of The Smartest Places on Earth (Public Affairs, March 2016), author of The Emerging Markets Century (Free Press, 2007), Emerging Securities Markets (Euromoney, 1984), and co-editor of The World's Emerging Stock Markets (Probus Publishing, 1992). He was an adjunct professor at Georgetown Law Center and taught at the Harvard Institute of Politics and Thammasat University, Bangkok. He has lectured widely at universities and other professional audiences around the world. He holds an M.B.A. from New York University’s Stern School, an M.A. in Russian and Eastern European Studies from Yale University and an undergraduate degree in Economics from Erasmus University in the Netherlands. He is a Board member of The Brookings Institution (and Co-Chair of its International Advisory Council), the NPR Foundation (and until 2013 its Chair and NPR board member), the Smithsonian’s Freer Sackler Gallery, and Magnum Photos. He is also a member of the Yale President’s Council on International Activities and of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is married and has two children and a grandchild.